The story of 'Baby Kevin'

Vanished mom leaves abandoned newborn to a better life

A knock came at the door of the Sheriff’s Office substation early the morning of New Year’s Eve, 1988.

Sgt. Jay Green left a shift-change meeting with his fellow deputies and opened the door to find a young man.

“There’s a blanket in front of a car out here,” the passerby said. “It’s crying.”

There on the pavement, next to Green’s cruiser, was an infant wrapped in a thin blue blanket, screaming.

Green keyed-up over his radio to Collier County Sheriff’s Office dispatchers, frantic.

“Naples, I just found a baby in the parking lot.”

It was 8 a.m. on a Saturday morning with temperatures in the low 60s, but everyone remembers the day as being colder.

Chief Stephanie Spell, one of two dispatchers working that morning, heard the infant’s cry.

Spell’s daughter turned 3 that day, and she thought of her. Spell couldn’t fathom why a new baby was outside on such a chilly morning.

Green scooped the baby up, wet with afterbirth, and pulled the blanket back to see his umbilical cord still attached.

Patrolman Bill McDonald met Green in the substation parking lot behind what is now Joe’s Diner off U.S. 41 North. McDonald joked with the deputies who had now gathered that the baby should be named Jay.

The ambulance pulled in and Green passed the baby to a paramedic, who handed him a pair of scissors.

“Here, cut the cord,” she said. Dazed, Green obliged.

The paramedic sealed the infant’s placenta in a bag and swaddled him.

As the ambulance sirens faded, Green and McDonald marveled at the child’s luck. Shift change at the substation took place each morning at 7 a.m., so deputies estimated the baby had only been outside for about an hour before he was found. It was clear that whoever had left the child wanted him to be found.

But this was 1988, a good decade before the first states would enact safe-haven laws offering desperate parents the option of leaving their babies with authorities — no questions asked.

The boy’s mother could face criminal charges for child neglect and abandonment if authorities ever found her; if she ever came forward with a change of heart.

Whoever left the child was lucky he had been found on a holiday at a relatively idle substation, McDonald thought.

*****

“My whole life is a lie,” Brice Jordan Foutch jokes. “All these years and I thought it was a fire station.”

The 27-year-old doesn’t remember an exact time when he learned he was adopted. He’s just always known.

Raised in North Fort Myers and later Labelle, Brice is a recent graduate of Florida Gulf Coast University. He works full time, interns at a law office and lives in Estero with his sister Alari, who was also adopted.

Growing up, Debbie and Jim Foutch made sure their children knew all about their birth.

“They told me you know, somebody left you for somebody else to take care of,” Brice said.

He’s gone through all the stages since: Hating his birth mother for abandoning him, wondering if she was at least rich enough now to make it up to him. Then realizing, this woman — his mother technically but a stranger really — did what she thought would be best for him.

And now this is his chance to maybe find her. If she’s still around. If she wants to meet him. If she’s thought about the day she left her son in a parking lot on a cold morning and has wondered since how things turned out.

“I’d love to thank her,” he said.

*****

Deputies and paramedics burst through the hospital doors. An infant’s face peeked out from the mass of towels and blankets at nurse Kathy Good.

It was Good’s first day back on the job after taking time off for a miscarriage.

She had been nine weeks along when she and her husband Greg learned their baby had died.

Good clipped the umbilical cord shorter and treated the boy for hypothermia. Doctors estimated he had been born the same morning and lay in the cold for at least an hour before he was found. His body temperature was dangerously low and Good placed him in a baby bed with radiant heaters. He warmed right up.

All of the nurses fawned over the infant, but Good felt a special bond.

The baby was perfect. Wisps of brown hair lay on his head. He weighed a robust 8 pounds and at least 10 ounces. Notes on his birth weight vary.

Doctors ran him through toxicology and STD tests, both negative.

Good called him Kevin, because something about him looked like a Kevin.

And she cared for him daily, even driving into work on the days when she was off to calm the boy down when he cried inconsolably.

She bought him clothes because unlike the other newborns, there was no bounty of toys and diapers stockpiled from baby showers, awaiting his arrival.

TV stations and the Daily News referred to the boy as Kevin James Doe. Baby Kevin for short.

“He may not have that name forever,” Good told reporters. “But for now, it’ll work.”

Child welfare officials said Baby Kevin’s parents faced charges of child abandonment and neglect if found. They acknowledged that the possible charges put the parents in a Catch-22 situation. Still, they wanted to give his parents enough time to change their minds before going through with an adoption.

The mother was young, maybe 14 or 15, Green would later hear. She had been heavy and hid the pregnancy from her parents.

One night, she and her boyfriend rented a motel where she gave birth, wrapped the child in a blanket and left him at the substation the following morning.

Green heard she had come forward with her parents.

Others, like Good, said Baby Kevin had been too beautiful a baby to be someone’s first. A child’s head is usually cone-shaped after a first-time mother gives birth. Kevin’s was round.

In the coming days, three people would call the Florida Department of Health and Human Services with tips about Kevin’s birth mother. Twenty-five more would call asking to adopt him, one as far away as Atlanta, Georgia.

Farther north, a man in St. Louis, Missouri read about Baby Kevin in a wire story that ran in the Belleville News-Democrat.

Back at home that night, he told his wife about the child who had been abandoned all the way down in Florida.

“Debbie oughta get that kid,” Jay Foutch said, thinking of his daughter-in-law who had recently decided to adopt after years of trying to conceive.

Debbie and Jim Foutch spent the holidays in St. Louis that year, 1988, with Jim’s parents but could not escape the stories of Baby Kevin’s discovery down in Florida.

Debbie sat in front of the TV and wondered how someone could discard a child when she wanted one so badly.

Baby Kevin was found just days after another infant, dubbed Nicholas, was left in the parking garage of a Sarasota hospital on Christmas, wrapped in a quilt. Robbi and Steve Carroll discovered the boy, who had been left with a bottle of formula, still warm. Having struggled themselves to conceive, they asked to adopt the boy, news reports show.

A rash of abandoned babies

Other infants had been discarded across the country, shortly after birth in hospitals, at church doorsteps or left for dead in dumpsters. One such baby in a Tampa suburb became the center of a court case for which his mother was sentenced to five years in prison.

“It was happening monthly in Florida,” said Nick Silverio, founder of the Gloria M. Silverio Foundation, a Miami-based nonprofit that promotes the state’s Safe Haven laws.

Silverio started the organization in 2001, a year after Florida enacted its law, which allows for the legal surrender of infants seven days old or less to an employee at any hospital or 24-7 fire station.

Texas enacted the first state law of its kind in 1999. A federal law enacted in 1988 allowed for the legal surrender of an infant that was birthed at a hospital.

Florida and other states followed with their own variations. Some allow for surrender at police stations and for as long as 30 days after giving birth.

“When I sponsored the bill, babies were being dumped in dumpsters and it was horrible to watch,” said Sandy Murman, a Hillsborough County Commissioner who sponsored the Florida bill as a state representative. “We probably had about seven cases in a couple of years.”

Since 2000, Silverio said 240 babies have been legally surrendered under Florida’s law.

Silverio said the at-risk group for women likely to abandon infants is between the ages of 16 and 22. But the nonprofit’s 24/7 hotline for desperate mothers has received calls from women as young as 13 to as old as 41. Silverio said between seven and eight calls come through each day.

“It’s a situation where moms are pregnant, they’re hiding their pregnancies and they don’t feel there’s any resources. They’re all alone, they feel,” Silverio said. “And when they give birth, they panic.”

Good considered adopting Kevin, but at 28 believed she had plenty of time to conceive. Still, watching Kevin leave the hospital was a difficult day, one she remembers as vividly as the day he arrived.

“It was like losing a baby all over again,” she said.

“I have a baby boy for you. He has sandy brown hair,” the Foutches’ adoption agent said. “He’s on Marco Island and you can get him Friday.”

It was Baby Kevin.

*****

Brice Jordan Foutch grew up turning the pages of his baby book. Jim Foutch’s delicate script chronicles his first days as their son.

There are pages listing his first visitors and their corresponding gifts. And there’s a picture of Brice sleeping in the arms of a nurse named Kathy Good. Baby’s First Photograph, it says.

“I remember that picture. It’s ingrained in my memory,” Brice said.

For the first few years, Good sent birthday cards through the adoption agency. Debbie Foutch keeps these things along with photos and scrapbook supplies, planning to crop and affix the details of the past 27 years on acid-free paper.

Good heard the name when she saw Baby Kevin once more, seven years after his birth, when his parents came to the hospital to adopt their second child.

Debbie Foutch recognized Good’s name on the nursing rotation.

“What are the odds?” Debbie wondered, and told another nurse to thank Good.

She did not know that Good had gone on to miscarry four more times since caring for Baby Kevin.

Finally, thanks to artificial insemination, she became pregnant with a daughter. But the girl was born premature just 22 weeks later.

Emily Jean Good came into the world Feb. 24, 1998 and left it one hour and 42 minutes later.

Good decided then she couldn’t give birth again just to watch an infant die in her arms.

Good and her husband never adopted.

“So I just kind of kept stuff,” Good said. “Because I wasn’t able to get rid of it yet.”

Now Brice lives in Estero at an apartment with his younger sister Alari and their roommate.

He can talk for days like his dad. He gets cold on car rides like his mom. He deadpans like a pro and then laughs at his own jokes.

He’s tall, loves the St. Louis Cardinals, he vapes (though his mom wishes he wouldn’t), he works security at a gated community and interns at a law office. He graduated with a degree in criminal justice from Florida Gulf Coast University a few years ago.

He is frequently mistaken for the current rapper named G-Eazy. At a concert in West Palm Beach last month, he took dozens of photos with unwitting fans.

He’s a morning person. He drives fast and has earned enough speeding tickets to make NASCAR driver proud.

In school he excelled at any and all sports from basketball to ultimate frisbee to baseball, where he bats both left and right.

He was an easy going baby, and he’s a laid back young man. His parents said he was never rebellious, never argued with them.

“He’s just been a joy,” Jim Foutch said.

Brice moved to St. Louis about two years ago because he loved visiting his dad’s family as a kid. He lived downtown less than 10 blocks from Busch Stadium. He worked in security there too, but came home in December when his dad’s health took a turn.

“That’s all I have, pretty much,” he said. “I don’t think I could have lived with myself if I was away.”

He has had, by all accounts, a wonderful upbringing. And he doesn’t dwell on it, but he still wonders what might have been; who the woman is who left him. What if Good had adopted him?

Since 2000, two babies have been left at Safe Havens in Collier County, Silverio said. One was left in an unsafe place, meaning left somewhere other than a designated hospital or fire station. During that same time, 10 infants were left at Safe Havens in Lee County and one in an unsafe place. In fact throughout the 40 counties Silverio lists online, more infants are left in Safe Havens than in unsafe places, except for Putnam County, which had one in each category since 2000.

That women are seeking out the proper places to leave their children is an encouraging sign, Silverio said. But public awareness is constant work and the methods are constantly changing.

Dawn Geras, president and founding member of the Save Abandoned Babies Foundation in Illinois, tracks the number of babies surrendered under Safe Haven laws based on data submitted by each state. While it’s not inclusive, her records show 3,165 babies have been surrendered under Safe Haven laws across the country since Texas first enacted its law.

Geras wants to see standardization of the laws across all states to include fire stations, hospitals and police stations as facilities. And for all states to accept infants up to 30 days old.

Just this month, the state of Indiana installed two baby drop boxes. The temperature-controlled devices are rigged to alert authorities when an infant has been placed. Geras and others said the concept encourages anonymity and perpetuates a stigma.

These days, the goal is to welcome mothers into approved facilities where they can meet with first-responders to have conversations about adoption. In those situations, some mothers opt for anonymous adoptions under Safe Haven laws. Others might consider traditional adoption, where they let their information be known.

Brice knows little about his mother except that she gave him a shot at life. Maybe if he makes it known that he’s at peace with her decision, “No harm, no foul,” as he puts it, he can reach her.

“If it’s ever going to happen, now’s the time,” Debbie Foutch said.

*****

He’s considered a $200 DNA test that would lend some insight into his genes. But let experts ruminate on the science of it.

What Brice Foutch knows is this: He is alive because a mother he does not know brought him into the world. He survived thanks in great part to a woman who mothered him in his first days. And he lives now because two strangers, the people he will forever call mom and pops, decided to make him family.

“Not a day goes by that I don’t think about what they did for me,” he said.

Original stories about 'Baby Kevin' in Naples Daily News

Newborn baby left at substation

Published Jan. 1, 1989

Deputies at the sheriff’s North Naples substation met Baby New Year a little early Saturday morning — in the form of a brand new baby left at their doorstep.

A deputy found the baby boy on the ground of the substation parking lot at about 8 a.m., investigators said. The baby was wrapped in a sheet.

“It was very much a newborn,” Lt. Larry Hargrove said Saturday night. The baby was left with the umbilical cord, he said.

What the baby was not left with, deputies said, was any information that would identify him or his mother.

“No notes, no nothing,” Hargrove said. “No idea who he belongs to.”

Authorities took the baby to Naples Community Hospital where deputies said the child was in good condition.

A spokeswoman said the hospital will not release any information on the infant.

State looks for parents of abandoned newborn

Published Jan. 4, 1989

By Brenna Kriviskey

The 4-day-old baby boy sucked on a pacifier as he slept peacefully under a white flannel blanket in a plastic hospital cradle. Nurses say he is healthy, alert, and sleeps and eats normally.

Not bad for a baby who has been through some pretty difficult times in his first four days of life.

The baby, dubbed Kevin James Doe by hospital nurses, was found abandoned in the parking lot of the sheriff’s North Naples substation Saturday morning. He was wrapped in a blue bedsheet and still had his umbilical cord.

Investigators said the baby had nothing else that would identify him or his mother.

The state Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services is trying to locate Kevin’s parents, said John Runde, the agency’s public information coordinator, but there are no leads at this time. The parents could face criminal charges of abandonment and child neglect, he said.

“It’s up to the parents. If they want to come forth they can,” he said. “If they want their child, they have to come forward.”

Kevin is now in temporary HRS custody, Runde said. The agency will file for dependency later this week, he said. The agency then will have full custody of the baby and will be able to place him in a foster home.

After 60 days, HRS could file for permanent commitment, which would allow Kevin to be put up for adoption through a private agency, he said.

Although HRS wants to proceed with caution and allow Kevin’s natural parents enough time to come forward, the agency might ask for both dependency and permanent commitment at the same time, Runde said.

“It’s more than likely we’ll file for permanent commitment as well,” Runde said. “We have adoptive families waiting for a child.”

For now, the baby will remain at Naples Community Hospital, where he is being cared for — and slightly spoiled — by the hospital’s 25 or so maternity nurses.

“We buy him clothes and different things like that,” said nurse Kathy Good. “Other newborns, their parents buy them clothes. He didn’t really have that, so it kind of gives us a chance to be parent and nurse.”

She looked down at the baby asleep in her arms and adjusted the feet on his bright blue outfit.

“I bought this for him yesterday,” she said.

Good, who was the admitting nurse when the baby was brought to the hospital, said she was the one who thought of the name Kevin.

“I just kind of thought he looked like a Kevin when he came in,” she said. “He may not have that name forever, but for now, it’ll work.”

Kevin was the second abandoned baby found in the state in recent weeks, Runde said. Another boy, Baby Nicholas, was found abandoned near Sarasota hospital on Christmas Eve.